The biggest danger comes from INSIDERS

We do not know what is going on inside the computers, they are too complex

Transparency

Transparency is an extension of security. A 2nd check on the system.

Need to prove to the losers and to the public that they lost.

Ukraine, Egypt – public does not trust the elections. The result is revolts when the “elected” party goes too far.

Estonia, could not prove to the Center Party that they lost (2011)

Cannot recount the paperless ballots.

Center Party got 28% of paper votes. Less than 10% of the Internet vote. They are still angry.

Nobody, and no machine, should be counting votes in secret.

Ex: Tunisia – successful 1st ever election of the Arab Spring.
The government is moving ahead with a new constitution.
Every ballot was shown and counted to every observer present, in every polling place, worldwide, before the ballots left the precinct.
Result: the ballot counts are accepted.

Trachtenberg Electronic Verification System (TEVS)
System to read and count images of all the ballots in an election.
On first use in Humboldt County, discovered a serious bug in Diebold software.
See: http://www.tevsystems.com
Software is much improved recently.

Possible to conduct risk-limiting audits AND full rereading/recounting of ballot images (TEVS).

Policy Suggestions

Counties need much more financial support from the state. In general, they get much difficult work done with few resources, and are constantly being asked to do more. Increasing voting options such as digital voting systems, vote by mail, provisional ballots, early voting, etc, drastically multiply the complexity of what they have to accomplish, and they deserve better support.

Consider declaring ballots as public records. Some privacy issues, but we need to look at this closely.

Publish as much information online as soon as possible. This goes beyond detailed precinct reports, to include system logs, ballot definition files, etc. None of this should be treated as proprietary, which historically, it has been.

Absent very good auditing, California should require and pay for automatic recounts when the margin of victory is narrow.

The state should support, and counties should conduct pilot projects for TEVS, risk-limiting audits, and hand counting ballots in the precinct, to see how well they really work.

For projects such as the Pakistani voter registration project to work, the registration data needs to be available to the public.

Ideally, election audits should be run by an agency independent of the department that produced the original count.

Truly open source (free) software should have its testing and certification costs paid for by the state.

California needs to treat voter registration and vote by mail software as mission critical – subject to a top to bottom review, similar to voting systems.

California needs to start tracking VbM ballots throughout the entire chain of custody, including in the post office and the registrar’s office. Treat each ballot as if it’s worth $100, because it is.